1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a device which automatically aligns large sheets of paper, film, or similar material during an initial feeding process. This is particularly useful in copying, photographic, printing or similar operations.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the prior art, the user of a feed device for a large sheet of paper or similar material had to be careful to feed the paper straight into the device. Any misalignment of the paper in, for instance, a xerographic, photographic or printing process, resulted in an image which was skewed on the sheet. The process would, of course, therefore produce an unaesthetic and unappealing product at best and at worst could result in lost information.
A common improvised solution was to present a guide in the form of a wall parallel to the direction of travel of the paper. The user abutted the sheet firmly against the guide prior to the feeding process. In order to provide for differing sizes of sheets of paper, such guides were adjustable in the direction perpendicular to the direction of travel of the sheet. Additionally, in either the fixed or adjustable mode, a guide was provided for one or both sides of the paper.
However, this method is error-prone and time-consuming in that it is a manual process. It is particularly time consuming when the guides must be continually adjusted due to changing sizes of paper.
Furthermore, such a mechanism is not easily adapted to a fully automated process in that it merely provides guidance during manual intervention, rather than reliable alignment in the absence of human intervention.
Other true solutions to this problem have required the use of two or more control elements, such as clutches or solenoids, to control a registration gate and a set of feed tires or rollers.
Mechanisms which have reduced the control elements to one have required active elements on both sides of the media path, impractical for very large (wide) sheets.